Soundy

Slow shutter = motion blur. http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/12/12/45-breathtaking-examples-of-slow-shutter-speed-photography.html

HAHAHAHAHAH plugging Cat5's gauge (24 AWG) into that calculator, with all the same parameters, yields this: "It is unlikely that this wire can support 3.6 amperes of currency at a distance of 200 feet." Even using all four pairs for power, you get 9.24V drop. Four 24ga. pairs yield approximately the same area (and thus capacity) as 18ga.

I don't think even 24V would make it that distance over 18/2... I'd look at 14/2 minimum for 24VAC... larger still for 12. Local power would be the way to go, really.

This is an IQEye IQ511 with 7-70mm f/1.8 lens (non-megapixel). Mounting height is about 10m; range to target area I estimate at about 60m.

OKay, looking for a video intercom/enterphone setup that needs to fit some pretty specific criteria... hoping someone here can make some suggestions. The basics: entry call station with camera, master station with monitor. In addition: five non-camera call stations throughout the house. Would be nice: the in-house stations are also monitors Would be ideal: radio tuner built-in to the master station, or the ability to input music to broadcast through the house. THE CATCH: the existing system is an ancient four-wire Mircom system, and the owner really wants to do away with the big ugly 70s-style Mircom master station. We normally deal with Aiphone, but all their two-wire stuff appears to be limited to one master station and two sub-masters; there doesn't appear to be any support for additional audio-only call stations, until you get into Cat5e/Cat6 systems. As this is an older house, rewiring will NOT be an option. I found Entryvue (http://www.entryvue.com/residential.html) and their residential systems cover everything I need... except the radio or the ability to broadcast audio. Anyone have any other suggestions??

Been using this one on a number of sites, fits all your criteria pretty closely (except IR, but it works pretty well in low light): http://www.3xlogic.com/prod/1617/vsx-2mp-vd-2-megapixel-indooroutdoor-vandal-dome-daynight-ip-camera 2MP, dual-stream, 3.3-12mm lens, indoor/outdoor, rated for operation at 14-140F...

I'm doing this on several sites, except I don't bother with separate NICs, or with putting the NAS and cameras on separate subnets: Switch is a Cisco with eight 10/100 PoE ports and two gigabit combo ports: DVR and NAS both connect to the GbE ports; cameras all connect to the PoE ports, with two of those ports used for uplink to the rest of the network, and one for the NAS's console port. This has been a rock-solid setup on close to a dozen sites now, with up to seven cameras ranging from 1.3 to 5MP.

You could do that, but it's a lot of extra screwing around, extra parts, and extra cost, and really doesn't gain you anything. You don't have to use a screw-terminal transformer; you COULD just snip the barrel plug off a regular transformer, strip the wires back, then splice them (crimps, solder, tape, whatever you use) to the 18/2 that then goes to the camera. It's pretty much impossible to wire these things wrong - as I say, they'll take just about anything from 10-30 volts, AC or DC, and the inputs aren't polarized so it doesn't matter which way around you hook the DC. I think everyone pretty much agrees, the camera you had was probably faulty out of the box, and that's what was frying transformers.

Because it doesn't address the CAUSE of the problem.

B&H is missing a whole bunch of brands there...

That one looks like it uses standard glass fuses... try just about any auto-parts store.

You still haven't clarified just what this "integration" involves. Are we talking, user swipes entry card, DVR logs it with the appropriate camera... or system does facial recognition from the DVR to allow access... or something in between? The former is easy and I could list a half-dozen hybrid systems that do it. OS of the two units is irrelevant - the point of the setup is that both can be accessed from the same VMS. VMS doesn't care what OS the recorder is running. I think you'll find most encoders only work with the same brand IP cams - as hardwired notes, there are too many variations in IP cam streams that a decoder would have to accept and decode, that it would be impractical. It's an inherently niche market to begin with: decoding a megapixel cam to an analog feed is pointless as you loose the resolution, so you're already limited to using decoders with SD IP cameras... and those are a very small market because the added cost of IP vs. analog is attractive only in limited circumstances. Given all that, there's not a lot of incentive for manufacturer to push decoders, let alone make them work with a lot of other branded cameras.

The output terminals in almost all power cans are parallel circuits and any ONE terminal is capable of outputting the full current available from the regulator or transformer (or up to the rating of the fuse on that channel). If the supply is capable of 8 amps, you could put an 8A fuse in a channel and run a full 8A from that output. There's nothing actually limiting the current output of a channel.

Welcome. You may want to familiarize yourself with the forum rules before proceeding: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=3144

Don't waste your money on ground loop isolators ($20 each?!?!) before you try a separate power supply for each camera. Ground-loop issues with central power supplies, baluns and DC-only cameras are not uncommon, IF the cameras have a shared video and power ground. Isolators SHOULD work, but it's a work-around at best, not a fix. Grounding the DVR has nothing to do with this issue.

You don't have to wrap wires around anything - you just undo the screws on the green terminals a bit, bare a 1/4" or so off the end of the wire, push it into the connector, and tighten the screws down. Sure, you could fit some kind of female barrel connector onto it, like your other cameras have, but then you'd have splice a male barrel onto the end of your run... or you could snip the green connector off and just hard-splice your power run to the camera. Simply using the included connector as intended is far easier, cleaner, and more reliable in the long run.

You think that now... but why limit yourself? (Actually, looking through that PDF some more, it seems to indicate that it ONLY works with QVIS's own Cortex IP cameras). This is the sort of thing you should be looking for: http://www.3xlogic.com/files/110008%20TT%206.0%20Supported%20IP%20Cameras.pdf If an NVR doesn't have a compatibility list, run away, or you're just looking for headaches down the road.

Never used one, but it looks interesting... but it too, is limited to 2MP per camera... and again, you'll want to find a camera compatibility list.

Looks like it's basically a rackmount PC with internal 16-port PoE switch, yes. According to the specs, though, the most it records at is 1280x720 (which technically, isn't megapixel)... and it doesn't list what cameras it supports: since IP cameras use a variety of codecs (MPEG-4, MJPEG, H.264, JPEG2000) and most manufacturers use different interface URLs, you have to make sure that the cameras you choose are supported by the NVR you use... or that the NVR you choose is compatible with the cameras you're using. I'd steer clear of this one... Edit: then again, since it IS a PC and is just running Linux, there should be nothing stopping you from removing whatever NVR software they put on it, and installing your own... or wiping the drive and building something Windows-based, or even Hackintosh-based, if you lean that way Exacq is an NVR software that will run on Windows, Linux, AND OSX.

Thanks It was mainly done as a cost-effective measure, as all-GbE switches are still a bit spendy... or were when we started implementing this setup about four years ago; they're a lot cheaper now. I've posted this plenty of times... this is a basic layout of the network we use, tied into the customer's network so they have VPN access, and so the DVR and NAS have internet access to send alert emails:

To expand a bit... 1. Cat6 is not needed - Cat5e is designed for gigabit as well. 3. Almost all cameras currently available have only 10/100 ports, so your entire network doesn't have to be gigabit. We commonly use a switch that has eight 10/100 PoE ports, and two gigabit ports - the cameras connect to the PoE ports, and the DVR and NAS connect to the gigabit port.

As Seedigital points out, megapixel CAN be a cheaper overall solution. And at least if you're looking at PC-based systems, it eliminates the need for separate capture hardware. There are per-camera licensing fees with some software, but as also noted, there are exceptions to that as well. For just starting out on a home setup, using your existing network is fine. The main concern in bigger systems is how the video traffic might affect other network traffic... that, and potential security issues. Since motion blur is a factor of shutter speed, and most cameras allow you to adjust the limits of your shutter speed, or even set a specific speed, it's more a matter of how the camera deals with low light. Unfortunately, with no industry specs on how to measure and define light sensitivity, you more have to rely on experience (yours or others'). THAT is one of the biggest ongoing debates in the industry. Each has advantages and disadvantages. MPEG-4 and MJPEG tend to give better overall quality, especially at lower framerates, while H.264 creates less network traffic and uses less storage. The type of scene and amount of motion can affect both factors as well, and affect it differently depending on which codec is used.

IP cameras are recorded via network. You can record to an NVR (Network Video Recorder), which records only IP video, or you can record to a hybrid DVR, which is a DVR that records both analog and IP video. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. Most often, you'd use something like this for additional storage on a DVR or NVR that supports it, but a few cameras support writing directly to NAS drives. In the most basic form, there's no extra equipment - you could just plug a single camera into the network jack of your DVR/NVR. For more cameras, you'd use a network switch. Or multiple switches, if that's how your network is set up. Basically, you just need to connect the cameras and recorder to the same network. One of the real benefits if IP video is that it gives you a lot of options for configuring and laying out your system. With coax-based systems, it's one wire, one camera, and every wire has to run back to the DVR... with IP, you could run a dozen cameras over a single wire... or from a remote location... over wireless, over internet, over dedicated DSL... Think of it like watching a YouTube video: the video has been digitized, and is sent over the network as a data stream - you run software on the other end that views it. Add a "YouTube Downloader" type plugin that saves your video to disk... and there you have the basic functionality of an NVR... except the source is a constant live stream from a camera, rather than stored on YouTube's servers. You're left with NVR or hybrid DVR... or you're limited to cameras that can write directly to NAS. Since there are no PHYSICAL channels involved, there's theoretically no limit to the number of IP cameras that can be connected to an NVR. Most systems limit cameras based on performance constraints of the hardware. I don't deal with standalone NVRs, so I couldn't tell you what the "largest" ones are, but with PC-based systems, some software supports up to 64 "channels" on a single server. BTW, keep in mind that most (almost all?) standalone NVRs you find technically ARE PCs, using standard PC motherboards and hardware, running probably an embedded version of Linux or similar embedded OS. Most NAS boxes you look at (QNAP, Synology, etc.) are embedded PCs as well. Technically, no different than with analog cams (or even old film cameras, for that matter) - motion blur is entirely a function of shutter speed. Most *megapixel* cameras have a potential drawback in that squeezing more pixels into the same size sensor means the pixels are smaller and thus can collect less light, potentially requiring a lower shutter speed... however, there's more to low-light performance than just pixel size. There's an important distinction to be made here, BTW: IP is simply a transport method; there are lower-res cameras available (commonly VGA, 640x480) that use IP rather than analog transport. Analog video, however, is limited in resolution by the video standards used (NTSC/PAL) - thus, *megapixel* requires a different transport method, which means newer systems like SDI (maxing out at 2MP), or more traditionally, TCP/IP (cameras up to 29MP commercially available). Horsehockey. Once the system is set up, there's NO reason it should need any special ongoing maintenance, beyond what you'd give a standard DVR.

Hacked drivers and/or GV software... hacked to ignore the hardware check, or reverse-engineered... it generally leads to flaky or unstable installations.